The Systems Holding Back Women In Tech

This column continues to shine a light on the women in technology that reside behind the curtain - the disruptors you might not know by name but that are driving innovation forward. It champions both the incremental and the landmark progress they deliver in pursuit of technology advancement and the role that women play within the industry.

It was with this in mind that I leaped at the chance to speak with Catherine Ashcraft. She is the Director of Research and Senior Research Scientist for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). For the last 12 years, her job has been to document and help grow the role of women in technology. She provided some much-needed perspective on the history of women in tech and where we need to go from here.

Prior to joining NCWIT, Ashcraft’s expertise and research focused on issues of equity and diversity in the organizational structures of educational and workplace contexts. Her interest piqued, she pursued a job opening at the then two-year-old NCWIT to expand her work on gender, race, class and equity with a focus on the technology industry.

Throughout our conversation, Ashcraft spoke with urgency. She knows that the #MeToo movement has given her work new relevance and that it has earned some primacy within the tech sector because of troubling stories at companies like Google, Zenefits and others. But she is openly concerned that this moment will pass without the systemic changes needed to right the ship. She worries that if we focus too much on stats or “buzzword” talking points, we’ll miss our window.

In her work, she has identified three main ways that misperceptions about women in tech take hold. Despite common misguided assumptions about capabilities, suitability, or temperament - data and research continues to point to these three root causes as persistently maintaining the gender-gap in tech.

Societal Influences and Biases

The ways in which girls perceive STEM-related coursework and their own abilities are consciously and unconsciously shaped by the experiences of those around them. Society’s deep-seeded assumptions about women in tech inform the expectations of teachers, parents, counselors and peers. This perception can be directly and indirectly conveyed to girls, molding their own levels of interest and expectations. Being told that girls generally are not good at STEM, can undermine a girl’s own aspirations.

Elementary and Secondary Education

Societal biases have also influenced curricula and teaching styles. The result is less engaging computer science instruction for girls beginning at the K-12 level. Rather than developing compelling courses delivered in the hands-on way that engages a more diverse range of students, most schools are pushing rote topics and teaching. Multiple studies have also shown that teachers default to calling on boys more frequently and asking girls to take class notes. Ultimately, this method of teaching leads girls to shut down and prevents them from making the connection between technology in the classroom and how it can be used to solve problems in the world around them.

At the Secondary level, college and university admissions emphasize weeding out students for expertise and experience rather than encouraging exploration. Rewarding prior success improperly conflates the idea of experience with ability. Just because girls did not begin early with computer science does not mean they cannot catch up to or even surpass male counterparts. This ingrained approach does a disservice to women in tech and misses an opportunity to widen the funnel of females entering the field.

Workplace Systems

Even when women do swim against the current and succeed in entering the field of tech, they often encounter these same patterns and biases in the workplace. This implicit and unconscious bias informs employee development programs and even workplace policies. The result is that women often find themselves at a disadvantage for advancing or even staying in the sector over the course of a career.

What’s Next?

Ashcraft is adamant that by fixing the systems that create this broken context and environment, we can reverse the trend of women in tech and build a more supporting ecosystem from early childhood up through formal education and far into someone’s career.

Instead of focusing only on specific numbers of women in the field, forecasting shortages, and highlighting pay or skills gaps; Ashcraft says we must use research to highlight how these three systems are broken. By highlighting these existing systemic barriers and then building change, the numbers will naturally rise.

She suggests that educators begin by making a conscious effort to recruit girls to STEM programs. Even better, recruiting them in groups to build community will accelerate and sustain their development. She also encourages educators and administrators to re-evaluate coursework and the experience from a girl’s perspective rather than at a distance.

Ashcraft welcomes educational and media efforts that show girls how technology is present in their everyday lives and how it can empower them to be change agents. And by profiling successful women as the result of forward progress and actionable change, she believes we can begin to normalize the idea of women in tech.

As these changes take root, I’m confident we’ll also see an evolution in the types of women portrayed in columns like this. Rather than profiles of women that stumbled into their careers or that succeeded in tech despite a lack of formal instruction, more deliberate and well-rounded tech personas will emerge.

I am an advocate for women in technology. Through my founding roles at nonprofits TechGirlz and Women in Technology Summit, I work to inspire girls and economically empower women using technology. To date, TechGirlz has reached more than 10,000 girls across the country and ...